Thursday, December 28, 2006

Last night I dreamt that Steve and I registered ourselves as high school students in order to write a high school expose.How Steve could pass for a high school kid with his beardy face, I do not know. We had the first day and Steve signed up for baseball (which should have tipped me off that it was a dream).Later Steve and I played basketball, and then rode a bus somewhere with a girl with purple eyes-shadow that knew what we were up to.We met with the principal, and went back down to the basketball court.As I was walking to my car, some high school kid invited me home to hang out and he had a tortoise eating fruit right off the carpet. From the outside his house was a fancy town-home, and inside it looked like the trailer we lived in when I was young.I spilled a gallon of milk and apologized to his mother.And we sat in the back of his truck while he told me the story of the town. It was so bright and sunny. Fake, yet amazingly real.

I also dreamt the night before.I dreamt that there was some kind of disaster and people were spread thin.My uncle, aunt, and cousins were with me.My younger cousin found some way to visit some other group of people somewhere distant.He said it was fascinating, so the next time I went instead.It was a group of people living in a mountain lodge.We were in the chapel and suddenly the rear wall opened up with blinding hot light and they scattered.I hid under the pew.They found me and a man who walked out of the light grabbed my arm and said “She’ll do.”The girl who befriended my cousin yelled “No.”I told her it was ok, and walked into the light with them.And can’t remember much after that, except that I was on the run with a huge golden retriever, the size of a Newfoundland; unfortunately I didn’t know where I was or how to get home. We were sleeping in drainage ditches, looking for some direction, until I got cold and snuck into an elderly man’s house.And he found us and was calling the police as we ran out into the storm.And then I woke up.

I wonder what is up with these crazy dreams lately.Dreams that I can remember so well are unusual for me.

I suppose it is expected that I make some kind of thoughtful comment on the passing of President Gerald Ford. Something about the Warren Comission, Vietnam, the infamous Nixon pardon, maybe.Well, no dice.Former President Gerald Ford, when you were a young man in the Navy during WWII, you were a total dish.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Tara Conner, Miss USA, started the whole situation through underage drinking and general whorishness. Trump, no doubt a huge fan of whorishness decided to let Tara keep her crown- I'm sure the people of Kentucky are proud.

Now let me make something clear. You can go out and get drunk even if you are underage. You can have sex with 4 men at once, on camera. You can make out with drunk underage Miss Teen USA. You just can't do these things and be Miss USA. Though Donald Trump thinks you can....

Rosie stepped over the line on her show, The View, and commented on Trump's finances and business practices, calling him a snake oil salesman (like on Little House on the Prairie). Though in her defense, he is and being compared to a LHOTP villain is not the strongest of insults....

Trump then threatened to sue (at the same time as he is suing a town government that has fined him for building a super sized flag pole - without permits. He is calling it an assault on patriotism. Dude, just get the permit. Oh and might I add Donald Trump should be fined a ton of cash for wasting the Justice System's time. We have actual criminal cases to deal with. Hey, how about some Tort Reform, please!) and has been defaming her sexuality, appearance, etc. at every opportunity.

If you would like to view the footage of Trump vomiting hate it is up on YouTube or you can catch it on Bulletproof Bracelets.

I don't care if someone is rude to you. I don't care if they down right insult you on national television. But you never ever get to act the way Trump is acting. You don't get to spew hate speech, ever. I don't care who you are.

Donald, you're a pig and I hope you get your comeuppance. I wouldn't watch The Apprentice if featured Matthew McConaughey and John Stewart jell-o wrestling. Your inability to behave in an adult fashion and overwhelmingly terrifying frothing at the mouth makes me think you may be a wee bit unhinged. And also have The Rabies.

9 am, still no coworkers.You know what this means, right?No snacks!Damnation!!!

Maybe I should go out for a latte.

Maybe I should post a picture of a hamster eating sushi.Maybe Google should thwart me, by not publishing my picture of a hamster eating sushi. This must have something to do with my outing the Google-Dalek Conspiracy.

1. Why have we not bred cats with butt cheeks? When petting a cat, it will always make sure to place its anus directly in your face. When wearing a beige sweater, it will place its anus on your sweater. Cats like you to view their anuses the way Britney Spears likes you to view her hooha.

2. With a universe of lies to tell, men almost always pick the crappy ones. This is why we need a female president. Example of a terrible lie, this t-shirt:

Nobody with a penis liked The Notebook. Penises and The Notebook are utterly incompatible- it is simply not scientifically possible. In fact 9 out of 10 chimpanzees who were forced to watch The Notebook ripped off their own penises just to have something better to do with their time. The 10th chimpanzee was female and cried silently wishing that a love story that beautiful could ever happen to her. Then she threw some poo and had a banana.

Monday, December 25, 2006

Merry Christmas. I had this amazing Christmas Dalek image to go with this post, but now I can't find it, so you must content yourself with my beautiful words of yuletide joy:Wii!Wiiiiiii!!!!!!Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, December 21, 2006

We made a commitment to the people of Iraq. We promised them a better life and I think we owe it to them to try. Regardless of the origins of the war, the motives of the leadership, and the mistakes made, it is unconscionable to abandon the people of Iraq.

As the presidential election looms, I am looking at having to choose. I want a tolerable conclusion in Iraq- not for us, for the Iraqis. I want gay people to legally wed. I want control of my uterus. I want to be sure that the poor don't lose their retirements through the privatization of social security. I never want our government to give up on universal education through the use of vouchers. I don't think that the rich should pass down millions of dollars to their children, creating generations of Paris Hiltons. I couldn't possibly care any less about lowering my taxes.

But it looks like I can't have it all.My political crush, John McCain can't give me what I want.I don't know enough about where Obama stands or really where any of the possible democratic candidates stand.

I don't want to choose between personal freedoms and Iraq. But I am afraid I will have to.

Billed as an "unlikely duo," two famous Georges – former President George Bush and George Clooney – made a joint appearance Thursday on ABC's Good Morning America to discuss their efforts to rebuild an emergency care hospital in Louisiana after it had been destroyed in Hurricane Rita.

"I thought we could add a little spice to this event, and, boy, was I right," the former chief executive, 82, told GMA's Diane Sawyer, as PEOPLE's Sexiest Man Alive sat at his side.

Praising Clooney – who in the past has been highly critical of current President George W. Bush – Bush said, "What he has done for the morale of this town is remarkable."

Not that the two didn't also kid around for the camera. "Don't ask about Barbara," Bush told the 45-year-old ladies man.

"How's Bill Clinton's golf game?" Clooney wondered. Bush then said it wasn't true that Clinton was nearly hit in the head with a golf ball while the two former presidents were playing recently. Bush also said he was "too old" to ask Clooney "about Britney Spears."

On Wednesday, Bush, who had been personally asked by Clooney to participate in the reconstruction effort, presented local Louisiana officials with a $2 million donation from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund that will pay for operating expenses once South Cameron Memorial Hospital is rebuilt next year, the Associated Press reports.

"I know there's been a lot of tears shed over the past year," said Bush. "Hurricane Rita, like Hurricane Katrina, showed us the very worst in nature but they've also brought out the best in our human nature."

Clooney, managing to refer to his former role as Dr. Doug Ross on ER, told the appreciative crowd: "There is good news in all of this, which is that when the hospital gets up and running, I will not be doing any of the medical procedures."

He also said, "I'm coming to remind people in the rest of the country that just because you're not on the front page anymore, that all the problems that have been placed here from Katrina and Rita are not solved yet."

George Clooney remains a mystery to me. One night he is getting Danny DeVito wasted and the next he's hanging on with former Presidents.

I also don't understand the whole George Clooney thing. With the sexy and the whatnot. I mean he's not hard to look at, but he's no John Stewart. Maybe you have to meet him.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase garnering the US 828,000 square miles for just over 23 million dollars (including interest). This was very controversial at the time, but I think that we can now agree that it was worth the money-- especially to make the French further kick themselves in hindsight. (Perhaps all this hindsight kicking is why the French only work like 10 hours a week. Also this may explain mimes.) Though I say this was a good deal, I am not entirely certain of the monetary value of Oklahoma, but I guess it came in handy later.

This of course brings me to the Lewis & Clark Expedition. The LCE didn't actually come about because of the purchase, it was already planned (because Jefferson was a sneaky bastard); however Jefferson was eager to see what he got for his 15 million dollar debt. (Hey Kansas.)

Captain Meriwether Lewis was chosen by Jefferson to lead the expedition and he, in turn, chose William Clark to co-head the Corps of Discovery (as it was called). Being an American, Lewis decided to bring his dog, a Newfoundland named (and I am not making this up) Seaman. Being a Southerner, Clark brought York, a slave whom he had inherited from his father. Along the way they picked up a chick, Sacajawea.

Three years after the Expedition Lewis died of a gunshot wound to the chest in some sleazy bar, after threatening to jump off a bridge. Clark became an administrator of Indian Affairs and spent the majority of his post-Corps time subjugating the natives and played a roll in the Trail of Tears. After their return, York asked Clark to free him. Clark was ticked about York's cheek and rented him out to hard labor. York died of cholera whilst traveling to re-join Clark. Five years after the expedition Sacajawea died of "the putrid fever." Seaman never made it home.

Seaman and York share a statue at Quality Hill, in Kansas City, Missouri. Sacajawea has an elementary school in Richland, Washington named after her (go trailblazers!). Lewis' memorial is along the Natchez Trace Parkway which links Mississippi and Arkansas. Clark has a trout named after him.

And that is about as much as anyone needs to know about the Corps of Discovery.

Last night a good friend from college called me to let me know the date of her wedding. Later in the evening basically my best friend from college was totally dumbstruck that I would fly to BFE nowhere, York, PA for a wedding in June, but wouldn't go with her to our reunion in Philadelphia a mere month earlier.

My reasoning is thus:

Ally's wedding is in scenic Dover. I can fly into Harrisburg, rent a car and have a lovely time hanging out with Ally and her family. Some of my college friends will be going and Dover will be cheap and relaxing. If I feel the urge I can hop into NYC or Philly and visit a few friends on my own schedule.

The reunion will be awkward and expensive. For one, I am in a different social graduating class than the one in which I technically graduated. Also, 5 years, is not that long. Which is a blessing, because I have used my 120, 000$ education to make graphs for the last 4 years and hopefully by the twenty year reunion I will have done something that doesn't involve labeling axes. Also, I didn't like most of these girls when I went there, odds are I won't like them now....

Uhm, so there.

Turkey, when you get married I'll fly out to whatever crappy place where you want to get married. White dress = plane ticket.

Tom was a cat. Jerry was a mouse. Joseph Barbera was the man who helped bring them together.

Barbera, the animation giant who, with partner William Hanna, set Tom chasing after Jerry, Scooby-Doo scurrying after ghosts, and Fred Flintstone peddling after brontosaurus burgers, died Monday at his California home. He was 95.

Barbera, who dreamed up new cartoon ideas into his 90s, had been the surviving half of the legendary Hanna-Barbera tandem, a team so synonymous with Saturday morning TV of the 1960s-80s. Hanna died in 2001.Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Smurfs and Josie and the Pussycats were among the pair's best known series. There were dozens upon dozens more, many of them variations, spinoffs and/or outer-space riffs on their signature shows. By one popular estimate, Hanna-Barbera produced more than 3,000 half-hours of animated entertainment to eat your Sugar Smacks by.

Barbera, credited with often working out the stories for his and Hanna's creations, never stopped thinking about the next project. "Joe Barbera was here at the studio until about three weeks ago," Sander Schwartz, president of Warner Bros. Animation said in an interview Monday. "He usually came in after lunch. Most days, I greeted him. He pitched me a couple of shows."And Schwartz bought some ideas, too, including one that became the 2005 direct-to-video movie Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry. (Barbera might have been unusually hip for a nonagenarian, but the Fast and the Furious reference was courtesy Warners, the current studio home of what once was Hanna-Barbera Productions.)

Schwartz admired Barbera's energy, attitude—and legacy. "Joe really set the standard for television animation," Schwartz said, "and pretty much single-handedly with...Hanna invented television animation."Through it all, according to Michael Mallory, author of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, there was one unmistakable trait in the partners' work: "Everything they did had heart." "That's kind of an old-fashioned, but it's true," Mallory said Monday. "The characters generally had relationships with each other."This was the case, Mallory said, even of the most famously at-odds Hanna-Barbera duo: Tom and Jerry. Tom may have wanted to eat Jerry, as Mallory put it, but Tom always felt bad if he believed he'd actually killed his outsized opponent. "These characters really had a tie to each other," Mallory said.

And Tom and Jerry really had a tie to Hanna and Barbera. The characters were the duo's first notable creations, debuting in 1940's "Puss Gets the Boot." The Oscar-nominated short wasn't billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and the characters weren't referred to as Tom and Jerry, but the sparring was vintage Tom and Jerry.

Born March 24, 1911, Barbera was a bank teller with an artistic bent until, as biographies have it, he ditched the desk job for an easel job. Barbera, the fledging fulltime animator, bounced around various studios until he landed at MGM in 1937. It was at MGM that Barbera met Hanna, and, eventually, Tom met Jerry. Barbera and Hanna's cat-and-mouse games went on to net seven Oscars, from 1943 to 1952, all awarded to producer Fred Quimby. As the Academy statuettes suggested, Barbera and Hanna hadn't just created cartoons; they'd created movie stars. Accordingly, Jerry danced with Gene Kelly in 1945's Anchors Aweigh and 1956's Invitation to Dance. Tom and Jerry both costarred opposite swimming thespian Esther Williams in the 1953 splashy live-action musical Dangerous When Wet. According to Mallory, Barbera viewed Tom and Jerry as a natural duo whose adventures almost wrote themselves. "He'd say you have a cat, you have a mouse--half of your story is already done for you," Mallory said.

Hanna and Barbera, as they were professionally known, alphabetical order aside, left MGM to set up their own shop in 1957. The Huckleberry Hound Show, starring a folksy blue dog and featuring a stable of characters including a picnic-basket-loving bear known as Yogi, followed in 1958. Hanna-Barbera Productions was on its way. Besides the characters it produced, the duo's company is best remembered for figuring out how to make animation doable, budget-wise and production-wise, for TV. And while so-called "limited animation," a break from the fluid, classic Disney style, eventually gave way to Josie and the Pussycats robotically rocking out in front of a moving background, without it, the band and others might never had had Saturday morning gigs. Other early Hanna-Barbera shows included: Quick Draw McGraw, The Magilla Gorilla Show, Top Cat and the adventure-minded Johnny Quest.

The Flintstones paved the way for The Simpsons, et al., becoming prime-time's first animated series. The show about a modern stone-age family ran for six seasons on ABC (1960-66), before spawning several spinoffs and TV-movies, and inspiring two live-action comedies. The Jetsons followed The Flintstones briefly to ABC in 1962, before becoming a Saturday-morning staple. The space-age flip side to The Flintstone's prehistoric setting, the show could be viewed as a precursor of Partridge Family 2200 AD, Yogi's Space Race and Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space—in the Hanna-Barbera universe, it seemed, all characters eventually ended up in another galaxy. Hanna-Barbera championed more traditional science fiction and superheroes with Space Ghost, the 1960s version of The Fantastic Four, the Godzooky-introducing Godzilla Power Hour, and the Justice League of America-aspiring Super Friends.

In 1969, the Mystery Machine gang rolled onto CBS' Saturday morning schedule in the form of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, and another hit franchise—and character—was born.The series' namesake dog went onto get a sidekick (in Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, among other spinoffs), host an athletic event (in Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics), and inspire the big-screen, live-action franchise. "Right now, Scooby-Doo is probably the No. 1 [animated] character—over Mickey Mouse, over Bugsy Bunny," Mallory said.Hanna-Barbera continued to dominate Saturday mornings of the 1970s and 1980s with the likes of: Hong Kong Phooey, another show about a crime-fighting dog, albeit one who sounded like Scatman Crothers; The Smurfs, the Americanized version of the blue, European-born woodland creatures; and, every possible Yogi/Scooby-Doo/Flintstones/Jetsons mutation imaginable. The Hanna-Barbera factory made cartoons out of live-action comedies, à la Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days. It made cartoons out of presold toy lines and games, à la Pac-Man and the GoBots. All this, and the Banana Splits, too."They really were a full-service team," Mallory said. "They could do everything."

Generally, Mallory said, Barbera handled the first half of the animation process, laying out the stories, characters and overall design. Hanna took over as a show moved to production.Of the two, Barbera was more interested into moving beyond animation, hence his credits on projects that ranged from the Emmy-winning 1977 TV movie The Gathering to the unacclaimed 1978 TV movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.

To the end, Mallory said, Barbera--the animator, producer, director, writer and mogul--was an entertainer. "You'd go into his office...and he'd go, 'Did you see Seinfeld last night? And he'd go and he'd act out the entire episode for me," Mallory said. "You haven't lived until you've seen Joe Barbera at 89 sliding through the door like Kramer—and doing it brilliantly."

Monday, December 18, 2006

Two more articles on Judith Regan.The first is a Seattle PI article where Judith is alledged to believe in an zesty Zionist Conspiracy. Surely getting fired had nothing to do with the bad press and crazed attitude- blame the Jews. They're out there and they're are not eating bacon. GASP.The second is from the NY Times and is simply an interesting and funny reading on the situation.

NEW YORK -- In an explosive telephone argument that led to her firing, publisher Judith Regan allegedly complained of a "Jewish cabal" against her in the book industry and stated that "Of all people, Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie."

A spokesman for Regan's former employer, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., told The Associated Press on Monday that the remarks were based on notes taken by HarperCollins attorney Mark Jackson, with whom Regan was discussing the future of a controversial new novel about baseball star Mickey Mantle.

The spokesman, Andrew Butcher, released the comments in response to a threatened libel suit from Regan's legal representative, Hollywood attorney Bert Fields, who had called earlier reports of anti-Semitic remarks "completely untrue" and added that the publisher "didn't have an anti-Semitic bone in her body."

If you told me that Judith Regan said something nasty about Jewish babies, I could only assume that she was implying that black babies are less stringy and have a less-like-chicken, more-like-pork flavor. I wouldn't put anything past this woman.

Since 1994, Regan had headed the ReganBooks imprint at News Corp.'s HarperCollins. She was fired Friday.

The allegations first emerged earlier Monday when The New York Times, citing two unnamed News Corps officials, referred to unspecified anti-Semitic comments.

Regan, one of of the book world's most successful publishers, already had tense relations with HarperCollins and News Corp. Last month, Murdoch cancelled "If I Did It," her planned O.J. Simpson book and Fox television interview.

Simpson's book, said to have described how he theoretically would have committed the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, had been scheduled for release Nov. 30 following the airing of a two-part Simpson interview.

Simpson was acquitted of murder in 1995 but later found liable for the killings in a wrongful-death suit filed by the Goldman family.

The “If I Did It” book and television package was shelved not because it was in bad taste or because it was bad for the culture at large, but because it was bad for business. The News Corporation, after all, was riding with Ms. Regan every step of the way as she bolted together the multiplatform deal for “If I Did It.” It was only after an outcry that included two dozen Fox affiliates that the HarperCollins project was junked.

And now Ms. Regan’s career at the News Corporation is in the same trash bin. Why now?

No one woke up Friday morning and discovered that Ms. Regan had bad, if lucrative, taste. But when her O. J. Simpson deal went south, she refused to go away quietly even though Mr. Murdoch had already taken a bullet, then continued to complain that she was being undermined long after the story had quieted down.

The News Corporation had profited handsomely from Ms. Regan’s tendency to shoot from the hip, but when she started firing inside the corral, well then, that was another matter.

If she did it, here’s how: Ms. Regan first responded to public opprobrium over the Simpson project with an unhinged eight-page defense of her interview. And then, after the plug was pulled on Nov. 21, she failed to accept the decision. (When Mr. Murdoch says something is dead, put away the paddles and pull up the hearse.)

Instead she railed against HarperCollins, the News Corporation book division that owns her ReganBooks imprint, while taping her Sirius Satellite Radio show, according to Ron Hogan, an editor at GalleyCat, which is a book-oriented blog. And finally, she made offensive remarks in a phone call to one of the company’s lawyers on Friday, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times.

“I think someone looked a little bit down the road and saw train wrecks everywhere,” said a HarperCollins executive who declined attribution because the case might end up in litigation.

That someone was Jane Friedman, the head of HarperCollins, who gave Ms. Regan the gate last Friday night in a two-sentence statement. It was made in a hurry — there were no expressed accommodations for the authors and 40 employees of the ReganBooks imprint — which suggests that the decision was made in a hurry, as well. (The company said on Saturday that the division will continue operations under Cal Morgan, the editorial director of ReganBooks.)

None of this was part of the plan when Ms. Regan moved her hugely successful publishing operation to Los Angeles this year. In announcing the move, she suggested she was switching to the left coast to form a literary salon of sorts, seeking out interesting folks from the entertainment and publishing worlds to form a kind of “cultural center.”

In therapeutic circles, her move to Los Angeles is called a geographic cure. A person up against the consequences of bad decisions and bad judgment — her affair with Bernard B. Kerik, the disgraced former police commissioner and ReganBooks author, was made all the more interesting to the media when it emerged that she was one of two women on the side — decides to switch ZIP codes for a fresh start.

Instead, she found O.J.

Ms. Regan’s strategic shift to California put her more closely in touch with an entertainment culture that was of a piece with her approach to publishing. Her big television project, after all, was “Growing Up Gotti.” Those who found “If I Did It” to be a patently offensive title need only remember that she also published the very successful “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.” (It might have been subtitled, “Making do with vacant eyes, stage moans, and anonymous co-stars.”)

But then, Ms. Regan has actually been in the celebrity business her whole career, with her ability to sell the tatty and salacious elements of contemporary culture. She formed those skills as a reporter for The National Enquirer, but in a world where many office workers spend their days surfing for a shot of Britney Spears sans panties, that work history was a credential, not a knock.

Ms. Regan always lived her public life as if it were one big MySpace page, which she filled with outrageous personal and professional behavior and intemperate words. Part of it seemed like shtick, but she seemed to cross a line bordering on mania after her motives in interviewing Mr. Simpson were questioned.

First, she issued a statement that compared her own alleged victimization as a battered woman with that of the murdered Nicole Brown Simpson. “The men who lied and cheated and beat me — they were all there in the room. And the people who denied it, they were there, too.” (It sounded a little crowded in there.)

Instead of saying sorry about that, Ms. Regan went ballistic in a statement that read like an autopsy on an open deadly wound. Her nonapology apology approached absurdity, a biblical Act of Contrition written (at times) in the voice of a young girl.

“I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen.”

Ms. Regan then reflected on her time with Mr. Simpson: “Thought process disorder. No empathy. Malignant narcissism,” she wrote as if she had been looking in a mirror, not conducting an interview.

Her decisions made quick enemies of almost everyone, including some of her colleagues at the News Corporation. To his credit, Bill O’Reilly (a man who knows a thing or two about riding out bad press) called the Simpson project “simply indefensible.”Even Geraldo Rivera’s journalistic principles were offended.

She might survive those two but, in 2006, Mr. Murdoch is another matter. He has done a fine job recently of repositioning himself as media baron who is both a friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton and yet again a pioneer in the evolving media space. One of the cardinal rules in business is to protect the king, but after the Simpson affair, he found himself dragged into the muck of his tabloid past.

In The Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten invoked that past, assailing the “predatory Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who has devoted his life to making money by making sure that news and entertainment are as coarse and vulgar as can be imagined in as many places as possible.” That kind of public reframing, combined with Ms. Friedman’s antipathy for a renegade West Coast office, made Ms. Regan’s firing a matter of when, not if.

Ms. Regan will change addresses, but not disappear. The best-seller list in any given week attests to the fact that she has a talent for identifying and filling consumer needs. And it is the job of media corporations to satisfy the market without regard to taste or rectitude. That’s no altogether a bad thing. We wouldn’t have “The Simpsons” — another News Corporation product — without it.

But stars, even the biggest-earning ones, become expendable when they begin to embarrass someone besides themselves. Just ask Tom Cruise.

The sensationalist literature maven who tried to play ball with O.J. Simpson has been sacked.

News Corp. announced late Friday that HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan has been fired, a move many are viewing as punishment for the shellacking the company took when she revealed her plans for an exclusive interview with Simpson to promote his hypothetical tell-all, If I Did It, which was going to be released under the ReganBooks imprint.

The book was due out Nov. 30; the two-part interview was slated to air Nov. 27 and 29 on Fox, and News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch slammed the brakes on the whole project Nov. 20, about a week after the free world found out what Regan had up her sleeve.

"Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman said in a statement. Per various reports, Friedman and Regan had a tempestuous relationship over the years, and, according to Variety, Friedman also took a lot of heat for her silence surrounding the Simpson debacle.

In the meantime, the ReganBooks label will continue under the HarperCollins General Book Group. Regan moved her eponymous group, also responsible for Jose Conseco's steroid-fueled memoir Juiced and Jenna Jameson's instructional bio How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, from New York to Los Angeles earlier this year.

According to the New York Times, HarperCollins issued the two-sentence press release with the terse headline, "Judith Regan Terminated," even before her employees on the West Coast were aware of the move.( HA!)

After Simpson's deal was scrapped (not until after he had been paid a reported $3.5 million, however), the erstwhile murder suspect told a Miami radio station that the title of the book and TV special was not his idea and that a ghost writer was responsible for much of the book's lurid details about how Simpson would have killed ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, if he had done it.

I see, if it is ghost written, it is totally not your problem. Additionally, I cannot believe that he got 3.5 million dollars for this!!!

Simpson also criticized Murdoch, who called the former footballer's deal "ill-considered" and apologized "for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson," (Did OJ forget he is supposed to be Nicole's family? I'm pretty sure if my mom was brutally murdered, my dad -in spite of their divorce- would not take advantage of her death in such a spectacularly revolting fashion. He has their kids, what the fuck is wrong with him?)saying the multimedia mogul shouldn't be "taking the high road either."

Not like OJ, who probably killed someone, then got away with it because justice does not outweigh a race riot in LA. On the other other hand, I am positive that Murdoch knew what was going down and only weighed in when popular opinion swung against the book.

Too late on all counts. Brown Simpson's sister, Denise Brown, said Nov. 21 on the Today show that News Corp. offered her family "millions of dollars" under the table to step aside when If I Did It hit shelves and airwaves.

While the company admitted discussing money with the family, a spokesman denied that there was any stipulation requiring the Browns to keep quiet.

Regan, meanwhile, defended the project in an eight-page statement released across multiple media channels, saying that the book deal money went to a third party to ensure that Simpson himself didn't profit from it.

Right. A third party- who, Kato?

The memoir-peddler labeled her position as being on the side of justice, saying, "I made the decision to publish this book and to sit face to face with the killer because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives."

What a bitch. What a colossal excuseless, remorseless, bloodless cunt.

If it was a line, no one was biting, including multiple Fox affiliates, who said prior to News Corp.'s ultimate decision to scuttle the project, that they wanted no part of it.

And if this tells you anything, the book didn't even encounter a warm reception from the Internet, the place where everyone assumed the tome would end up anyway.

Booksellers alibris.com and biblio.com both removed listings for the book last Friday, and eBay also knocked at least eight copies from the auction block—although not before at least one inquiring mind picked up a copy for $50, USA Today reported this week.

"It's a disgusting book, and we don't want to sell it," even if "people may have a right to sell it," Alibris CEO Martin Manley told the newspaper.

"Out of respect for murder victims, eBay may remove items closely associated with murder cases dating over the last 100 years," England said. "We reached out to the publisher who holds the copyright; they said they did not intend to distribute this book."

Actually, HarperCollins vowed last month to destroy every copy. According to early estimates, about 400,000 were printed, but there's no word on how many still exist.

Then there's the bookseller, who wished to remain anonymous, who told USA Today that he had snatched up 11 copies for about $12,000 from "a guy who knows a guy who works in a bookstore."

He told the paper he doesn't believe in destroying books, but he does believe in free speech. However, he didn't want to be identified for fear of being labeled "evil" for profiting from the Simpson book.

I love how free speech is such a nice excuse to be a nauseating piece of shit.

Of course there's no accounting for the taste of the guy who buys from the guy who met the guy who knows a guy.

Oh and just in case you forgot the evidence in the trial (courtesy of Wikipedia):

DNA analysis of the blood found in, on, and near Simpson's Bronco revealed traces of Simpson's, Nicole's, and Ronald Goldman's blood.

DNA analysis of bloody socks found in Simpson's bedroom showed the blood to be Nicole's.

Simpson's hair was found on Goldman's shirt even though Simpson claimed not to have been at the home and never to have met Goldman.

DNA analysis of blood on the gloves was proven to be a mixture of Simpson's, Nicole's, and Ronald Goldman's. The gloves also contained particles of Goldman's hair and carpet fibers from Simpson's Bronco.

Arrest records indicate that Simpson had been charged with the beating of his wife Nicole. Photos of Nicole's bruised and battered face emerged. Simpson was sentenced to 3 years of community service for the crime.

Police discovered that the dome light in the Bronco had been removed. A search of the vehicle revealed the light was carefully placed under the passenger seat and was in good working condition. Puzzling blood smears on the passenger floorboard indicated that Simpson may have purposely removed the light and placed it under the seat before the murders (assuming he had indeed murdered Brown Simpson and Goldman). Then after the murders he may have unsuccessfully tried to find it to put it back in the socket. Police on stakeouts routinely remove the dome lights from their vehicles to avoid detection when the car doors are opened.

It was discovered that one set of keys to Nicole Brown Simpson's home were missing. She had indicated to several family members and friends that she feared Simpson had stolen them to gain entry into her home. The keys were later found in Simpson's home.

Paula Barbieri indicated that she had broken up with Simpson the day of the murders. She indicated he seemed very disturbed at the news. Phone records proved that Simpson attempted to contact her shortly before the murders from his Bronco's cellular phone.

The left-hand glove found at Nicole's home and the right-hand glove found at O.J.'s home proved to be a match. They were also proven to be Simpson's size. Even though Simpson claimed under oath that he did not own a pair of Aris Isotoner gloves, several media pictures emerged showing Simpson wearing these exact gloves.

Bloody footprints in Nicole's home were identified as being made from a pair of Bruno Magli shoes. These shoes are expensive and rare. The size 12 prints match Simpson's shoe size. Simpson claims under oath that he does not own such shoes and in fact indicates that he thinks they "are ugly." A photograph was introduced showing Simpson wearing the exact shoes at an NFL football game. Simpson claimed under oath that the photo is a forgery and is backed up by an expert witness. Later, another photo taken by a different source, also showed Simpson wearing the same shoes at another NFL football game.

Friends and family indicated that Nicole claimed that Simpson had been stalking her. She said that everywhere she went she saw Simpson there watching her. She was afraid because Simpson had already told her he would kill her if he ever found her with another man.

Ross Cutlery provided store receipts indicating Simpson had purchased a 12-inch Stiletto knife six weeks before the murders. A replica of the knife was purchased by the police and provided an exact match to the wounds on Nicole and Ronald Goldman.

And to be fair (well, as fair as I get) opposing evidence and alternate theories:

The murder of Ron and Nicole was among a string of murders of people associated with Simpson, Ron, and Nicole. Casmir Sucharski, a friend of Simpson, was murdered two weeks after Ron and Nicole. On March 19, 1995, Simpson's friend, record company promoter Charles Minor, was murdered. On July 30, 1993, eleven months before the famous double murder, Ron Goldman's friend Brett Cantor was killed with a knife in a manner identical to Ron and Nicole: from behind and across the throat and stabbed repeatedly on the arms and chest. Michael Nigg, a waiter at the Mezzaluna (where Ron Goldman was also a waiter) was shot in the head and killed. Another Mezzaluna waiter barely survived a car bombing.

Many working at Mezzaluna were involved with the Mafia and/or the drug trade.

Photos of Nicole with known criminals of the drug trade in a hot tub and on a bed were shown on the news. Simpson said he was upset when he saw his children associated with the drug scene with which Nicole had apparently become involved.

Barry Hoestler, a private investigator hired for the Simpson case by Robert Shapiro, said Nicole talked about the idea of opening a restaurant with Ron Goldman as her partner, and financing it with cocaine profits. Hoestler said Nicole and her friends were "over their heads with some dope dealers".

Nicole's best friend was Faye Resnick, a cocaine addict. Someone broke into Resnick's apartment to take documents and photographs. Later, Resnick skipped town. Simpson's defense team said Nicole and Ron may have been killed by drug dealers to scare Resnick into paying her drug debt. Prosecutors said there was no evidence to back this theory.

There was an unexplained DNA mix on the steering wheel column of the car. The DNA was neither Simpson's, nor Nicole's, nor Goldman's.

The "car testimonies" of Park and Kato, which suggest unexplained movement of vehicle/s, were suppressed from the trial.

Al Cowlings once served as a bodyguard for convicted drug smuggler Joey Ippolito. Ippolito escaped from a Florida jail three weeks before the murders and made many calls to Simpson. According to the theory, Ippolito probably hired a hitman to commit the drug related murders. Frankie Viserto is one hitman known to be close to Ippolito. In the past, Viserto has tortured and beheaded his victims with a knife.

Nicole's sister Denise Brown was often seen and photographed with ex-Mob enforcer and FBI informant Tony Fiato, a recruit of Ippolito. Denise denied that Fiato was her boyfriend.

Police detectives broke state law and their own policy when they waited hours to summon the county coroner.

In violation of policy, evidence remained in the processing room for three days before the first piece was booked in the secure ECU. The evidence was on a tabletop, and could be handled by anyone with access. 70 to 80 police personnel had access.

Someone broke into Robert Shapiro's office, forced open a locked filing cabinet, and stole confidential papers related to the case.

Simpson said that only once, in 1989, had he and Nicole got into a fight that injured her. Nicole used makeup in one of the photos showing her with facial bruises after the fight. He said Nicole's written statements of domestic abuse were a plan to get out of a prenuptial agreement.

None of these assertions explains Simpson's behavior following the murders, such as the self-incriminating statement to police, the attempt to flee, the suicide note, the apologies to the police who eventually arrested him, the inability to remember how he had cut his finger to the bone the night of the murders, or his differing statements about his whereabouts during the time of the murders. In addition, none of this explains how Simpson's DNA was at the murder scene and the victims' blood was inside his car and his home.

Jason Simpson Theory

Jason Simpson had developed a crush on Nicole Brown Simpson, and was angry at the lifestyle she was involved in, which included drug use.

Jason Simpson had been known to go into violent epileptic rages and would often not remember what he had done. (Yea, epileptic people murder, like all the time.)

Jason was a chef-in-training and would always carry his knife set with him. These knives were more than capable of committing the murders, and inflicting the type of wounds found on the victims.

Jason had no alibi the night of the murders, as the restaurant he was working at was closed that night. He stated he was cooking in front of 200 people the night of the murders. However, the restaurant that he worked at during the murders could hold a maximum of 87 people at any one time. He also later stated in a civil deposition that he clocked out after the murders had taken place.

After committing the murders, Jason called Simpson to the crime scene. Simpson struggled with his son to take the weapons from him, thus providing the detectives with the gloves and the blood evidence that would be used at his trial. Dear also believes this is where O.J. received the cut on his hand that prosecutors said was inflicted during the murders.

O.J. tried to cover up the crime of his son because of the guilt O.J. felt as a result of being a neglectful father.

In the long run, I don't know for certain whether or not he did it. But the way he has handled himself is disgusting. I wouldn't call 911 if I found him bleeding to death in the street. Eh, who am I kidding I wouldn't tap my break if I saw him crossing the street.Frankly, I am surprised that some crazy hasn't gotten him yet. Still time though. Plenty of time.

So I was cruising the OSHA website because Workplace is saying that my not coming into work due to work NOT HAVING ELECTRICITY is called "vacation." I am pretty certain this is illegal and I want to have evidence when I go to my union rep and raise hell.

Now, when checking the spelling of Redenbacher I came accross his wikipedia entry. For the dime tour, read on:

He earned a small fortune in fertilizer, but in his spare time, he indulged in an obsession he'd had since he was a child: developing the perfect popcorn. His wholesome image and folksy name confused many consumers, some even writing the company to ask if Mr. Redenbacher was a real person, and not an actor. He responded to this by appearing on various talk shows, professing his identity. (These were apparently really really exciting talk shows- maybe like Geraldo.)

On September 19, 1995, while in the whirlpool tub of his condominium in Coronado, CA, Redenbacher suffered a heart attack and drowned (wink wink nod nod- heart attack in the whilpool eh?). He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea. (Is this chicken, or fish? Neither it's Orville Redenbacher!)

Before you all set out to travel for the holidays I would like to remind you to be sure to:

1. Have a car cell-phone charger.2. Have your car's routine maintenance done before you leave-- and be sure your defrost, wipers, and all lights are working.3. Bring blankets, snacks, and bottled water. 4. And of course, you should already have: flares, a spare, and a jack.

Friday, December 15, 2006

'Atlanta Beauty': Zoo names new panda By DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Writer 35 minutes agoATLANTA - Children sang and performers put on a lively dance Friday as Zoo Atlanta unveiled the name of the nation's newest panda cub — Mei Lan, a 12-pound ball of adorableness too young to attend the hoopla.Mei Lan, which officials said means "Atlanta Beauty," was the most popular name in an online poll at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Web site out of 10 names chosen by the zoo, media organizations and residents in China's Sichuan Province, where the Chengdu panda refuge and breeding center is located.Little Peach and Bright Star were among the other choices in the poll that drew 57,000 online votes.Chengdu Director Zhang Zhihe said Mei Lan, pronounced "may-lan," has male overtones, a gift Chinese parents bestow on female children whom they want to step outside traditional roles for women."It means her parents want her to be as capable as a boy," Zhang said. "It is a beautiful name."Lion dancers performed to ensure good luck and prosperity for little Mei Lan, and Chinese-American children sang "Panda Mimi" in Chinese.The honoree did not make an appearance but could be seen via video feed sleeping in her secluded habitat.Mei Lan took her first shaky steps in seclusion this week, a milestone that means her public debut is just a few weeks away. Until the debut, panda fans have been keeping up with the cub and her mother, Lun Lun, on the zoo's online panda cam.Nine-year-old Lun Lun gave birth Sept. 6 to the fifth giant panda born at a U.S. zoo in the last six years.Mei Lan will return eventually to Chengdu to breed. Lun Lun was inseminated in March through a new process that aims to get a nearly pure semen sample from a male panda using massage, zoo officials said.After several years of trying, the zoo artificially inseminated Lun Lun at the end of March.Dennis Kelly, the zoo's president and CEO, said the zoo hopes to impregnate Lun Lun again in 18 months."This is a happy day along a journey that's going to continue," Kelly said after the ceremony. "We expect more work will be done."

I don't even know where to go with this. If I were not using my cousin's computer I would download a picture of a panda smoking a cigarette with a big smile on his face.In other news, 'panda' is apparently a common slang term for a police car.

300 say they got ill from Olive Garden42 minutes agoINDIANAPOLIS - More than 300 people say they became ill, and at least three have been hospitalized, after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant last weekend, health officials said Friday.The restaurant has been closed while health officials and the company investigate what caused customers to complain of nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea, a company spokesman said.Steve Coe, a spokesman for the Orlando, Fla.-based chain of Italian restaurants, said health officials are focusing on an employee who had flu-like symptoms similar to those patrons complained of.Six restaurant workers reported Monday that they felt ill, said Marion County Health Department spokesman John Althardt."We're trying to isolate what the cause of the illness might be," he said.Health officials have found no link to theE. coli outbreak that sickened dozens of people who ate at Taco Bell restaurants in the Northeast recently, Althardt said.The reports have been isolated to the one restaurant, appearing to indicate the problem is not linked to any products used in the food, Coe said. Food suppliers typically supply the same products to many restaurants."We are taking this extremely seriously," he said. "But at this time there is no reason for us to believe that there is any connection with any E. coli outbreaks."Health officials were collecting leftover food and stool samples from those stricken to pinpoint the source, Althardt said. Inspectors met with restaurant managers on Tuesday and found no health code violations.

That will teach them. Olive Garden, ah, taste the mediocrity. Yum, it tastes like E. coli.

I know this because I am there right now.Woke up with no power. No shower, dressing by flashlight.Got into work. No power.So then I went to my uncle's house, where as it turns out my aunt is having the departmental lunch. And lo, I know I am in hell for there is small talk and my ex, who showed up with two girls (who looked to be 'barely legal').Good times.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

So, I still haven't made New Year's Eve plans, possibly because I am becoming a hermit. Someone should have a party, Chris. Somewhere convenient to my home, Chris. With jell-o shots, Chris. Maybe someone named Chris, Chris.

FOND DU LAC, Wis. - Rick Lisko hunts deer with a bow but got his most unusual one driving his truck down his mile-long driveway. The young buck had nub antlers — and seven legs. Lisko said it also had both male and female reproductive organs. "It was definitely a freak of nature," Lisko said. "I guess it's a real rarity."

He said he slowed down as the buck and two does ran across the driveway Nov. 22, but the buck ran under the truck and got hit.

When he looked at the animal, he noticed three- to four-inch appendages growing from the rear legs. Later, he found a smaller appendage growing from one of the front legs.

"It kind of gives you the creeps when you look at it," he said, but he thought he saw the appendages moving, as if they were functional, before the deer was hit.

Warden Doug Bilgo of the state Department of Natural Resources came to Lisko's property near MudLake in the town of Osceola to tag the deer.

"I have never seen anything like that in all the years that I've been working as a game warden and being a hunter myself," Bilgo said. "It wasn't anything grotesque or ugly or anything. It was just unusual that it would have those little appendages growing out like that."

Bilgo took photos and sent information on the animal to DNR wildlife managers.

John Hoffman of Eden Meat Market skinned the deer for Lisko, who wasn't going to waste the venison from the animal.

"And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."

And by "hunter bags deer," I see they mean hunter hits deer with truck/eats roadkill.

If this were a comic he would get super deer powers. I don't know what those would be.

I'm a bit sad, though. I think this beats the 6 legged frogs we used to find just off the Hanford nuclear reservation.Well, at least by one leg.

When I was a child I dreaded the emissions test with far greater force than I dreaded cauliflower or the SATS. The emissions test was a yearly event wherein we paid 15$ to be told that our car sucked (the duct tape might have been advanced warning, however) then paid another 200$ towards repairing the sucky car, thus we went without something. Food or sundries usually got the axe.

Today, I was going to look into the very guts of the emissions test and in all likelihood, for the first time ever, actually pass.

I waited all aflutter in my car for my turn, then I asked lots of questions at the first stop. At the second stop, the man turned on my car for approximately a minute and then passed me.The man in front of me got to do this nifty driving on rollers and had an interactive video. I got nuthin.

Even looking at my receipt I still can't figure out what they are actually testing. And they wrote down my mileage incorrectly.

I'm going to have to cruise their website to figure this all out. Let no opportunity for tedious trivia go un-obsessed upon- that's my motto.

Oh, and the picture above has nothing to do with anything, but... Holy Crap! It's Lego Dr. Who and the Lego Tardis being advanced upon by Lego Daleks! What's not to love?

Monday, December 11, 2006

Iran on Monday hosted a conference gathering prominent Holocaust deniers that it said would examine whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place, drawing condemnation from Israel and Germany.

The conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an apparent attempt to burnish his status at home and abroad as a tough opponent of Israel. The hard-liner president has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Organizers touted the conference as a scholarly gathering aimed at discussing the Holocaust away from Western taboos, but the 67 participants from 30 countries were predominantly Holocaust deniers. They included David Duke — the former Louisiana state representative and Ku Klux Klan leader — and France's Robert Faurisson and Australian Frederick Toben, who was jailed in Germany in 1999 for questioning the Holocaust.

Also at the conference were two rabbis and four other members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Jews United Against Zionism, which says the creation of the state of Israel violated Jewish law, does not deny the Holocaust occurred but argues that it should not have been a reason for the founding of Israel.

In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on the world to protest the conference, terming it "a sick phenomenon."

German Parliament President Norbert Lammert protested the conference in a letter to Ahmadinejad.

"I condemn any attempt to offer anti-Semitic propaganda a public forum under the pretext of scientific freedom and objectivity," Lammert wrote.

The two-day conference was organized by the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies.

"This conference seeks neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust," the institute's chief Rasoul Mousavi said in an opening speech. "It is just to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue."

"The objective for organizing this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue," Mottaki said.

"If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?" Mottaki said.

Ahmadinejad has said that the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazi German regime during World War II was a "myth" and "exaggerated." He has also repeatedly questioned why the Holocaust has been used to justify the creation of Israel at the cost of Palestinian lands — a view popular among Iranian hard-liners.

Israel's official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, condemned the Tehran conference as an attempt to "paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly brush."

The leading Israeli novelist and peace activist, Amos Oz, also denounced the meeting.

"I think the conference in Iran is a sick joke, and I hope it will be received with revulsion and disgust everywhere in the world," Oz said.

The gathering coincided with an independently convened academic conference on the Holocaust in Berlin, Germany, where historians affirmed the accuracy of the Nazi genocide data and questioned the motives of those behind the Tehran forum.

The number of Holocaust deaths "is not a figment of the imagination. This comes from the Germans themselves, and therefore any denial of these figures is absolutely senseless," historian Raul Hilberg, author of "The Destruction of the European Jews," told the Berlin conference.

Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin's TechnicalUniversity, said people who deny the Holocaust "know perfectly well what happened."

"They want to use what happened — through denying it — to effect something else, to articulate the crude old anti-Semitism against Israel," he said.

Iran has spent months preparing for the conference, even publicizing it during the September visit to Tehran of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who contradicted his hosts by saying the Holocaust was a historical fact and that an exhibition of anti-Holocaust cartoons, then on display in the city, promoted hatred.

I will readily grant that the Holocaust should not have resulted in the Allies butting in and redistributing The Holy Land all higgly pigly. And I am damned tired of constantly supporting Israel with my tax dollars at the expense of American lives, commerce, etc. Especially given that, considering Israel's size, they have the best trained and I believe best funded army in the world. If my Wayback Machine was working I would journey back in time and stop the whole stupid business.

And while I'm at expressing unpopular opinions, I also think that if we stopped being so damned cuddly with Israel now, they would work a hell of lot harder to gain peace. God promised them The Holy Land, I didn't. I'm pretty sure that God's way doesn't involve acting like a dick all the time, then running to your big brother to prevent you getting your just desserts.

I don't think there can be peace in Israel. There will be no peace in The Holy Lands until all sides can get their religions out of their governing.

However, denying that the Holocaust actually occurred is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. There is a very special place in hell for these assholes.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the stuff nightmares are made of- if you want to know what keeps me up at night, there you go.

That is a prayer card with Dominick the God-Damned Italian Christmas Donkey- you doubters.

I am suffering from a case of the Mondays that even the power of tasty cookies cannot cure. Speaking of which, my antibiotics aren't working, so I'm still sick. I'm also still proofing the same bazillion record spreadsheet of doom. I want to go home and hide under my covers, but I have to proof my stupid spreadsheet.

And mean people keep calling about their affidavits, specifically the absence of their affidavits, and I want to yell at them and say, "Things That Must Not Be Named came out of my nose this morning! I am sick! I should be home! I hate you and your legal documents!!!!"

And today some morning DJ played the theme from the TV show, The Nanny, and it is in my head and won't get out. It's like the ceti eels that Khan puts in Chekov's ear to ruin Kirk's birthday party cruise thingy.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

So, I was home sick yesterday- hence lack of bloggage and slight erm.... delirium. Today my grandma calls and asks me why I didn't call her back yesterday and I explained that I am ill. She asked me what kind of ill and I said the kind with hurty ears and also brown snot. Grammy goes cracker-dog and insists that I go to the doctor because, "Oh my God, Pumpkin, you could go deaf!"

Fine, 15$ is a small price to pay to not have my Grammy calling me three times a day yelling, "Can you still hear me, Pumpkin!"

So I go to the doctor and it turns out that what I thought was some kind of allergy thing that I've been having for months is actually a sinus infection.

NIPOMO, Calif. - Sheila Kearns had a Christmas tree delivered to her home on Sunday. She says she thought she'd been pricked by pine needles when she reached into the tree while decorating it. But the next morning, she found a bat hanging upside down in her home.

It turns out that the Christmas tree farm Kearns bought from keeps bats around for pest control and that one unwittingly hitched a ride to her home.

Animal control officials picked up the bat, which tested negative for rabies.

Kearns got a tetanus shot and some antibiotics, but says she's not fazed. She says she'll keep buying her trees from the same farm.

Be vigilant, gentle readers, for nature is wily and not to be trusted.Last night the UPS man came to my door and I assure you I checked through the peep hole twice; just in case it was really a goose or a raccoon.One cannot be too careful when dealing with The Rabies.

Consumer culture and indeed popular culture revolve in large part around shared admiration, shared likes: Fandom, in a word, is a thing that can bring us together.

But what about shared dislikes? Can a community form around that? What is the opposite of a fan club? The answer is the Rachael Ray Sucks Community.

Gathering by way of the blogging and social-networking site LiveJournal, this group has more than 1,000 members, who are quite active in posting their latest thoughts and observations about the various shortcomings, flaws, and disagreeable traits of Rachael Ray, the television food personality.

"This community," the official explanation reads, "was created for people that hate the untalented twit known as Rachael Ray." The most important rule for those who wish to join: "You must be anti-Rachael!"

As with any community, the key to attracting members is not just a clear core idea but one that can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. Members of the Rachael Ray Sucks Community certainly do this, criticizing her cooking skills, her over-reliance on chicken stock, her kitchen hygiene, her smile, her voice, her physical mannerisms, her clothes, her penchant for saying "Yum-o," and so on.

The founder of this enterprise is Misty Lane, 32, of Lansing, Mich., who turns out to be not an angry sociopath but an upbeat-sounding woman who punctuates every other sentence with a friendly laugh.

In the context of anti-Rachael Rayism, Lane was an early adopter: She founded the group three years ago, when Ray's "30 Minute Meals" was just another show on the Food Network. A cooking enthusiast who enjoyed picking up tips and inspiration from "true chefs," Lane complained that Ray trafficked in culinary "common knowledge." And that she kept waving her arms.

"She just used to drive me crazy," Lane says, laughing.

Sounds like a good reason to change the channel, but instead Lane started her community and alerted the 40 or so people on her LiveJournal friends list. Only a few joined, and the community remained small until it was mentioned last year (in a pro-Ray essay) in the online magazine Slate.

By then, Ray, a Cape Cod native, was on her way to becoming the pop culture juggernaut she is today, with a couple of Food Network shows, a syndicated talk show, a magazine started a year ago that is expected to top a million in circulation, plans for a restaurant, and even CDs of her favorite songs for kids and the holidays. Meanwhile, Ray-bashing has flourished, too.

Which raises a curious point: While the community is now mentioned in practically every article about Ray, and new members keep chiming in, it seems to have had no impact on Ray's rise.

Ed Keller, chief executive of the research and consulting firm Keller Fay Group, says that while some brand managers live in fear of negative chatter, what really matters in gauging "talk share" is whether positive talk dominates.

"If you've got a fan base," he says, "you can weather negative word of mouth." (And the anti-Ray sentiment may be a special case, given that many of her fans are almost certainly motivated by an anti-sentiment of their own, against complicated cooking and "foodie" culture.)

Lane has wondered why her particular community has received so much attention. "Most celebrities have anti-sites on the Internet," she points out, and so do plenty of prominent brands, such as Starbucks and Dell. Perhaps the real lesson of communities of disregard is that they're a sign of brand health: Nobody bothers to get together to hate an irrelevant entity. Where would the fun be in that?

And while the tone of the anti-Rachael movement sometimes seems a little unbalanced, fun is basically the point, Lane maintains, of her "silly hobby." She spends an hour a day or so on the site, doing basic maintenance, commenting on new posts, and, most of all, being entertained.

The anti-Ray community is funnier -- and far more active -- than any Ray fan site she has seen.

"It's nice to find like-minded people," Lane says. "You think for the longest time that you're all by yourself, and you're the crazy one for not liking something. Then you meet other people who dislike the same things you do.

"It's like a family reunion!" Lane concludes. And then she laughs, quite cheerily.